When (and if) I ever get around to it, there will be stuff...in sections.

This is really a throwback to the long-gone days of yesteryear, when people actually created websites by hand, and didn't bother with long, drawn-out, complicated web-publishing systems. I long for those days.

That is, in fact, why I've built my own site, rather nicely, I must say, to mimic more of Apple.com than a personal blog. The reason for this being that I'm rather long-winded, but I can hide this on the innards of the site, rather than on the front page. In fact, one of the draws of this site is, and will probably always be, the "With a linkness" section.

I'm fascinated by the web, yet I don't have time to find everything. But I do find some really interesting things. When I find them, I will email them to people, or IM, or just post it in a blog somewhere. Doing that, forever, has really been what people like about me: random links.

So, as I reopened MacStansbury.com for business, that's what I really wanted to showcase. I've been a fan of the Daring Fireball: Linked List for a while, now. It's always a great resource for finding links to Mac-related tech news. I love the format, even to the way you click the titlebar in NetNewsWire and it takes you to the link, not daringfireball.net. When I was copying people and things, that's what I wanted, the form of the Daring Fireball Linked List.

But, the scope is too specific. I tend to jump around, quite a bit, and I'm not entirely a computer nerd. It was when I found Remaindered links weblog at Kottke.org that I saw somebody doing what I wanted, though not really, again, in the format that I wanted. As with the Linked List, it was "here's a link, now click it." Almost exactly what I was looking for, yet it shows up on the front page, many times substituting for, and acting as, his blog-product.

On the Remaindered page there's links to some other link-blogs...yet the are suspiciously del.icio.us-heavy. In fact, del.icio.us was created to do just that, create links that other people would share. Do I want to share? Nope. I'm hogging all the links for myself; I'm greedy.

Two of the other link list that are on the page, Waxy.org: Links Miniblog and What Do I Know - Enjoying, handle the same function, though it is, again, not the implementation I'm looking for. However, at least neither of these sites use their links as blog-fodder. Personal peeve, but I haven't been broadcasting since 1998, so whaddoIknow?

I'll take a second to point out the links at Ace of Spades HQ. Up on the top right, there they are. It's an architectural wonder that they exist at all, since all of mu.nu is run off one server, with hundreds of little blogs pulling this-way and that. That list gave me the inspiration to do this site, as I'll explain. For several months, starting last year, I was just doing the Linked List approach here, whenever there was a tech story, I posted it here, getting back to my roots.

However, Textpattern was great, and fulfilled my every need. But, unfaithful lout I am, I had to get that wandering eye for which I'm so well-known. WordPress is my new darling, with it's sweet loving php commands, and the ability to make and take trackbacks built-in. I had to say goodbye to Txp, and figure out how to make WP cower to my will, all in hopes of creating my own Linked List.

Like I said, the Ace list showed me what I wanted. Mainly:

1. I didn't want comments on it, like Ace's
2. I didn't want it in the sidebar, like Ace's
3. I didn't want to force people to hit the page, like Ace's

Before you think I'm going off on Ace's links, I'm not. He's got 15,000 times the traffic, so almost all the people coming to his site will see that list. The people are going for the front page, not the links, They are an added benefit. That's the same thing with Kottke and Gruber's site, they are going for the main content, not just for a bunch of links. Yet, the Linked List is such a pull for me (one of the things I keep NetNewsWire on for 24/7), that I'm going to pay the yearly subscription just to get that list feed to me as soon as possible.

And, that would be it. I found a Miniblog plug-in for WordPress that does everything that I want it to. It gives me the form of the Linked List, I can take the scope of Remaindered, and do it all as a reason to hit the site, rather than something as an added extra.

status: published
lastmod: '2006-10-01T02:15:01.000Z'
author: John Stansbury
cms: wordpress
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